Climate change is making the days on Earth slightly longer, according to Swiss research. Melting polar ice discharging into the oceans is changing the distribution of mass across the planet, which is slowing down the Earth's rotation. Check out our selection of newsletters. Subscribe here. This is reported by a research team led by Mostafa Kiani Shahvandi from the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH) in the journal Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences. + Swiss climate policy violates human rights: court verdict According to the study, the climate-related effect on day length is currently around 1.33 milliseconds per century. If climate change is not curbed, the effect could become greater than the influence of the moon on the Earth's rotation, the group explains. This effect of the moon is currently 2.40 milliseconds per century. Tugging at the planet The moon's gravity creates tidal forces on the earth, which are mainly visible in the ebb and flow of the tides.
